Category Archives: Windows

Producteev, one of our favourite — and one of the best — to-do apps, has released a massive upgrade that includes some long-awaited features and platform updates. The web and iPhone apps have gotten a makeover, the much clamoured-for Android app has finally arrived, and there is now a Windows 7 desktop app to balance out the Mac version. Even the logo has been updated (bye bye Tasky the beaver)!

To top it all off, Producteev has added a few new features into the mix — and yes (drumroll), that does include sub-tasks…

Check out the video below for the overview of some of the new functionality in the multi-platform task manager.

There have been usability and visual enhancements across all apps, improvements to some of the main Producteev feature-set (discussed in previous posts), and some brand new features such as integration with TaskRabbit (a service for crowdsourcing small tasks), the ability to print tasks and export them to CSV, as well as the aforementioned sub-tasks.

Now, I know many of you have been waiting patiently for sub-tasks, but don’t get too excited. At this time, sub-tasks are really nothing more than a checkable list added to the top of the main task’s detailed view. There is no way to interact with them outside of that view, or to add specific dates, labels, or anything else. Also, they don’t appear to work in the mobile apps yet, either. Hopefully, there will be improvements, and soon, especially in the case of the missing mobile integration.

The Android app is great. I can now use Producteev with my wife’s phone just as easily as my own, and with an interface that’s nearly identical to the iPhone’s. As Producteev mentions in this post, however, Android users should be aware that the new app is in beta. Don’t expect an error-free experience, just yet.

As always, Producteev is free to use for workspaces that have one or two people. If you want to collaborate with larger teams, unlimited people and storage space can be had for $20 USD per month (it gets cheaper the more workspaces you buy).

Update: Google Calendar integration has been temporarily disabled due to stability issues. It should be back up and running within the week — and it will be better than before. Two way task-sync with Gcal, folks!

If you want to squeeze every last ounce of speed out of your browsing experience, then check out the latest browser speed tests at Tom’s Hardware. The site takes a look at several browsers on both the PC and on a Mac, and offers results in several different categories. The site then crowned a winner on each platform, as well as overall.

Ask any computer expert, and she will stress the need for not only local backups, but offsite backups as well. One option to get offsite backups is to use an online service. For many years, I was a happy subscriber to Carbonite. As the number of computers in my household grew, however, I needed a more economical solution. My wife and I each had a desktop and laptop, and I also ran a Windows virtual machine on one of my Macs. That made five systems that I needed to backup. After a bit of research, I settled on CrashPlan, and haven’t looked back. Not only is the CrashPlan+ Family Unlimited plan a good choice for a family with many computers, but CrashPlan might also be a good choice for you if you don’t want to pay anything at all.

Editor’s note: If you run a web server, or like to mess around with networking gear, then you might be familiar with Telnet and SSH. Only the truly geeky need apply. Today, 40Tech is pleased to present you with a guest post from James Sudbury of Netzen Solutions Ltd. James takes a look at how to get up and running with Telnet on Windows 7.

Telnet is an old outdated protocol that is used for remote command line administration on various devices such as Cisco routers. I would recommend the use of SSH over Telnet in any circumstance; however I still find the Telnet command useful for testing mail servers and for checking open TCP ports. The ability to use Telnet might not be obvious on Windows 7, but it can be done.

Editor’s note: Today, 40Tech is pleased to present you with a guest post from Derek Zhuang, who takes a look at McAfee AntiVirus Plus. I haven’t used a McAfee product for years, so I was interested to hear if it had changed from what I remember. I know that some of you uber tech geeks out there aren’t McAfee and Norton fans. We keep an open mind here at 40Tech, though, so we were interested to see what someone had to say about the current incarnation of McAfee’s product. — Evan Kline

The spanking new McAfee AntiVirus Plus 2011 is an upgraded version of the 2010 McAfee VirusScan Plus. There is, of course, more than just the cursory name change. The McAfee AntiVirus Plus 2011 comes with a number of extra protection features and a fresh interface, which makes the streamlining of complex, virus-protection tools easy.

Windows 7 has some handy windows management functions, such as dragging a window to the left side of the screen to have it snap to fill the entire left half of your screen, or dragging it to the top of the screen to fill the entire screen. If you want even more functionality, whether it be on Windows 7, XP, or Vista, check out Chameleon Window Manager.

We recently looked at Markdown, a markup format that lets you easily create HTML-formatted text. What can make Markdown even easier to use is if you use an app that supports it. On the Mac, Markdown apps are plentiful. On Windows, not so much. Fortunately, if you’re on Windows, you do have WriteMonkey. WriteMonkey is a Markdown tool, but describing it as such just scratches the surface.

I don’t know about you, but hung print jobs are the bane of my Windows existence. Have you ever had the “canceling . . .” message that just won’t go away? If you have, there is a simple way to purge your Windows print jobs, using a batch file.

If you have more than one computer sitting on your desk, and don’t want extra mice and keyboards cluttering up your workspace, take a look at Synergy. Synergy is free and open source software that lets you control multiple computers with one keyboard and mouse, using your home network. Each computer will need its own monitor. Once you’ve set it up, you can drag your cursor from one computer’s screen, right off the edge to the other computer’s screen.

One piece of software that Microsoft got right was Windows Live Writer. If you’re a blogger, and don’t want to dig around in HTML (and arguably even if you do), Windows Live Writer is the software that we recommend for your drafting needs. One flaw with Live Writer, though, is that it doesn’t offer a setting to change where your blog posts get saved on your machine. By default, your drafts and recent posts get saved to your user folder, in the \Documents\My Weblog Posts\ directory. What if you want to save your posts elsewhere? You can do this, with a registry hack. READ MORE